Fargo Works to Hold Back Rapidly Rising River

Thursday

Mar 26, 2009 at 5:17 AM

Worries extend throughout parts of North Dakota and Minnesota as the Red and Missouri Rivers swell.

MONICA DAVEY

FARGO, N.D. — Just as city officials here thought that they had built a wall of sand high enough to hold back the swiftly rising Red River, weather forecasters on Wednesday delivered a worrisome forecast: The river was rising higher than predicted, possibly to its highest point ever recorded.

With that, Mayor Dennis Walaker, looking tired and grim, announced that volunteers would need to work into the night, even as heavy snow fell, to add hundreds of thousands more sandbags to the top of a 12-mile-long dike protecting the city. The dike, already covered in sandbags, must be built yet another foot higher, Mr. Walaker said, in the hope of saving the city from what many fear will be a flood of proportions never seen here.

“I don’t care how old you are,” Mr. Walaker said. “You haven’t seen this in the valley.”

Worries of major flooding extend well beyond Fargo. Throughout parts of North Dakota and western Minnesota, residents are bracing for the Red River, nearby streams and rivers and the Missouri River to spill their banks — the result, experts said, of a combination of factors. In the fall, the flat terrain here was saturated by rain, followed by a winter of heavy snow, and now — as so much snow began melting — came days more of rain and, on Wednesday, at least four inches of snow.

All around, the frozen conditions were complicating efforts to stop the flooding. In Fargo, where the Red River marks the border with Moorhead, Minn., volunteers in snowsuits told of icy conditions on the dikes they were building but could barely see at times in the falling snow.

Snowplows focused all their efforts on clearing roads for flatbed trucks carrying sandbags and were escorted by police cars with sirens blaring. One concern, some officials said, was whether so many sandbags would function properly and hold back the river waters if they became frozen.

And near Bismarck, where some residents were evacuated and the Legislature closed down, the authorities used explosives to begin breaking up several large ice jams (some with frozen chunks the size of cars) on the Missouri that they feared could dam the river or divert water in unexpected ways.

In this city of 90,000, the state’s most populous, political leaders, who met in an emergency session late Wednesday afternoon, said they expected to announce an evacuation plan on Thursday. The mayor said an evacuation had never been tried in Fargo, even after a major tornado more than half a century ago.

Already, south of the city, at least 20 residents (and assorted pets) had to be rescued by boat from homes in which water had pressed through sandbags and made its way into first floors, said Sheriff Paul D. Laney of Cass County.

While much of life stood still in Fargo — schools closed, trials in the municipal court were suspended, as was home garbage collection — hundreds of people swarmed the floor of the Fargodome, the home of North Dakota State University’s football team and where a rodeo had been scheduled for this week.

In the center of the stadium, mountains of clay- and rock-filled sand were surrounded by college students, children, members of the National Guard and ordinary residents, all bearing shovels and filling white sandbags. Little forklifts whirred around bearing pallets of bags and dump trucks drove through delivering more sand, even as volunteers offered “fresh hot cookies,” neck massages and tetanus shots.

“I think my house will be O.K., but I’m here for all the people in harm’s way,” said Jack McCrary, 70, a retiree and Fargo resident who was spending a fourth day in the sandbag line.

Mr. McCrary said he had heard concerns about how the snowy, frozen conditions might affect all the flood-control efforts. Would water flow through frozen sandbags? How treacherous would it be to keep adding new bags to the tops of slippery ones?

Weather forecasters predicted that by Saturday waters would swell to more than a foot above the level reached on April 7, 1897, when the record flood occurred here. In 1997, the most recent major flood in this area, the river had been about a foot and a half lower in Fargo than forecasters are predicting this time. That year, it reached even higher levels in Grand Forks, to the north, causing damage of more than $3 billion.

In Fargo’s City Hall on Wednesday, city workers, all of whom have been assigned to 12-hour shifts, were answering phone calls from residents who wanted to know what might happen to their homes. “Fargo flood line,” the workers answered cheerfully. They checked addresses on city flood maps and urged people to bring items out of their basements.